What everyone is missing about Anthropic vs the Pentagon. And: The Meta leaks are worse than you think. — 80,000 Hours Podcast

When the Pentagon tried to strong-arm Anthropic into dropping its ban on AI-only kill decisions and mass domestic surveillance, the company refused. Its critics went on the attack: Anthropic and its supporters are some combination of 'hypocritical', 'naive', and 'anti-democratic'. Rob Wiblin dissects each claim finding that all three are mediocre arguments dressed up as hard truths. (Though the 'naive' one is at least interesting.)

Watch on YouTube: What Everyone is Missing about Anthropic vs The Pentagon

Plus, from 13:43: Leaked documents from Meta revealed that 10% of the company's total revenue — around $16 billion a year — came from ads for scams and goods Meta had itself banned. These likely enabled the theft of around $50 billion dollars a year from Americans alone. But when an internal anti-fraud team developed a screening method that halved the rate of scams coming from China... well, it wasn't well received.

Watch on YouTube: The Meta Leaks Are Worse Than You Think

Chapters:

Introduction (00:00:00)
What Everyone is Missing about Anthropic vs The Pentagon (00:00:26)
Charge 1: Hypocrisy (00:01:21)
Charge 2: Naivety (00:04:55)
Charge 3: Undemocratic (00:09:38)
You don't have to debate on their terms (00:12:32)
The Meta Leaks Are Worse Than You Think (00:13:43)
Three fixes for social media's scam problem (00:16:48)
We should regulate AI companies as strictly as banks (00:18:46)

Video and audio editing: Dominic Armstrong and Simon Monsour
Transcripts and web: Elizabeth Cox and Katy Moore